After many years of applying a theory with no results, Toska and Alois have a breakthrough.

Toska was already awake when the sun had risen.

Long-limbed and frail, delicate in her own skin, pale grey eyes simply studied the scientist whose bed she sometimes occupied but never really filled. The doctor had always found it difficult to ascertain the necessity of a full range of emotion, a full spectrum of need,

her culpability in the negligence of his biological imperatives,his fundamental criteria.

Yet in this moment, this quiet platonic moment repeated through all the times they'd existed together, when the sun lit him gently at the hazy dawn, she considered that what she felt for him may have been love.

Toska Rickard, an Expressionist doctor, manages to get through dinner with her father Nicolas Rickard, the Director of the Bourbaki Institute.

The sound of applause echoing through the auditorium was as familiar as it was irrelevant.

Like most things in Nicolas' life, his incumbent speech welcoming the latest group of exceptional young minds to the Bourbaki Institute had been a foregone conclusion, written long before and forgotten immediately after. It was not recycled, as many expected, nor was it canned. In fact, it was surprisingly genuine; he had said precisely what he meant and meant precisely what he said. Everyone accepted to the Institute was accustomed to being the smartest person in the room, their class, their school. It was only natural for them to assume it would be the same here, and it was literally Director Rickard's job to inform them that it was not.

His speech had been a precisely balanced affair, equal parts congratulatory and cautionary. They had done well to come so far, he had told them in no uncertain terms. For all intents and purposes a matriculation at the Institute guaranteed not only success but insight, an opportunity to witness and understand the greater machinations of a grander world.

Many of them, he had made clear, would never take advantage of that opportunity.